"Like silly beggars, who
sitting in stocks refuge their shame," occurs in _Richard II_; and in
_King Lear_ Cornwall exclaims--
"Fetch forth the stocks!
You stubborn ancient knave."
[50] Act of Parliament, 1405.
Who were the culprits who thus suffered? Falstaff states that he only
just escaped the punishment of being set in the stocks for a witch.
Witches usually received severer justice, but stocks were often used
for keeping prisoners safe until they were tried and condemned, and
possibly Shakespeare alludes in this passage only to the preliminaries
of a harsher ordeal. Drunkards were the common defaulters who appeared
in the stocks, and by an Act of 2 James I they were required to endure
six hours' incarceration with a fine of five shillings. Vagrants
always received harsh treatment unless they had a licence, and the
corporation records of Hungerford reveal the fact that they were
always placed in the pillory and whipped. The stocks, pillory, and
whipping-post were three different implements of punishment, but, as
was the case at Wallingford, Berkshire, they were sometimes allied and
combined. The stocks secured the feet, the pillory "held in durance
vile" the head and the hands, while the whipping-post imprisoned the
hands only by clamps on the sides of the post.
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